We report on our ongoing project of finding Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) that go into deep X-ray flux states detected by Swift. Swift is performing an extensive study on the flux and spectral variability of AGN using Guest Investigator and team fill-in programs followed by triggering XMM_Newton for deeper follow-up observations. So far this program has been very successful and has led to a number of XMM-Newton follow up observations, including Mkn 335, PG 0844+349, and RX J2340.8-5329. Recent analysis of new Swift AGN observations reveal several AGN went into a very low X-ray flux state, particularly Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxies. One of these is RX J2317-4422, which dropped by a factor of about 60 when compared to the ROSAT All-Sky Survey.
Probing the physics of the accretion flow around active galactic nuclei (AGN) is crucial to understanding their emission mechanisms as well as being able to constrain the geometrical and variability properties of the different regions around them. The soft X-ray excess -- usually observed below $\sim2\,\mathrm{keV}$ in excess of the dominant X-ray powerlaw continuum -- is one prominent feature that is commonly seen in type 1 Seyfert AGN and therefore readily provides a useful diagnostic of the accretion flow mechanism around these systems. NGC 5940 is a Seyfert 1 AGN which reveals strong, prom…
Compton-thick AGNs in the NuSTAR era. V: Joint NuSTAR and XMM-Newton spectral analysis of three "soft-Gamma" candidate CT-AGNs in the Swift-BAT 100-month catalog
The magnetar Swift J1822.3$-$1606 entered an outburst phase in 2011 July. Previous X-ray studies of its post-outburst rotational evolution yielded inconsistent measurements of the spin-inferred magnetic field. Here we present the timing behavior and flux relaxation from over two years of Swift, XTE, and Chandra observations following the outburst. We find that the ambiguity in previous timing solutions was due to enhanced spin down that resembles an exponential recovery following a glitch at the outburst onset. After fitting out the effects of the recovery, we measure a long-term spin-down rat…
Broadband X-ray spectroscopy of the X-ray emission produced in the coronae of active galactic nuclei (AGN) can provide important insights into the physical conditions very close to their central supermassive black holes. The temperature of the Comptonizing plasma that forms the corona is manifested through a high-energy cutoff that has been difficult to directly constrain even in the brightest AGN because it requires high-quality data at energies above 10 keV. In this paper we present a large collection of coronal cutoff constraints for obscured AGN based on a sample of 130 AGN selected in the…
SWIFT J164449.3+573451: a plunging event with the Poynting-flux dominated outflow
Swift J164449+573451是一个奇特的爆发，很可能是由一个巨大的黑洞对恒星的潮汐破坏提供动力。在潮汐破坏的情况下，我们表明，近星点的距离是相当小的破坏半径和外流应主要通过磁活动（例如，Blandford-Znajek过程），否则不能再现满足关系式$L_{X}\propto\dot{M}$的X射线余辉发射，其中$L_{X}$是X射线光度，$\dot{M}$是吸积率。我们还认为，$L_{X}\propto\dot{M}$可能存在于伽马射线暴的快速衰减阶段。
We present the combined Chandra and Swift-BAT spectral analysis of nine low-redshift (z <= 0.10), candidate heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) selected from the Swift-BAT 150-month catalog. We located soft (1-10 keV) X-ray counterparts to these BAT sources and joint fit their spectra with physically motivated models.The spectral analysis in the 1-150 keV energy band determined that all sources are obscured, with a line-of-sight column density NH >= 10^22 cm^-2 at a 90% confidence level. Four of these sources show significant obscuration with NH >= 10^23 cm^-2 and two additional sour…
Broadband X-ray Spectral and Timing Analyses of the Black Hole Binary Candidate Swift J1658.2-4242: Rapid Flux Variation and the Turn-on of a Transient QPO
Suzaku View of the Swift/BAT Active Galactic Nuclei. V. Torus Structure of Two Luminous Radio-loud AGNs (3C 206 and PKS 0707-35)
We present the results from broad-band X-ray spectral analysis of 3C 206 and PKS 0707-35 with Suzaku and Swift/BAT, two of the most luminous unobscured and obscured radio-loud active galactic nuclei with hard X-ray luminosities of 10^{45.5} erg s^{-1} and 10^{44.9} erg s^{-1} (14--195 keV), respectively. Based on the radio core luminosity, we estimate that the X-ray spectrum of 3C 206 contains a significant (~ 60% in the 14--195 keV band) contribution from the jet, while it is negligible in PKS 0707-35. We can successfully model the spectra with the jet component (for 3C 206), the transmitted …
While X-ray emission from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is common, the detailed physics behind this emission is not well understood. This is in part because high quality broadband spectra are required to precisely derive fundamental parameters of X-ray emission such as the photon index, folding energy, and reflection coefficient. Here we present values of such parameters for 33 AGN observed as part of the 105 month Swift/BAT campaign and with coordinated archival XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations. We look for correlations between the various coronal parameters in addition to correlations betwe…
Evidence for a strong 19.5 Hz flux oscillation in Swift BAT and Fermi GBM gamma-ray data from GRB 211211A
University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, NASA/GSFC（NASA戈达德太空飞行中心高能物理实验室）；Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, NASA/GSFC（NASA戈达德太空飞行中心空间科学与工程研究中心）；UFABC, Santo Andre（圣安德烈联邦大学）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；University of Tampa（坦帕大学）
Changing-look (CL) AGN are unique probes of accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), especially when simultaneous observations in complementary wavebands allow investigations into the properties of their accretion flows. We present the results of a search for CL behaviour in 412 Swift-BAT detected AGN with multiple epochs of optical spectroscopy from the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS). 125 of these AGN also have 14-195 keV ultra-hard X-ray light-curves from Swift-BAT which are contemporaneous with the epochs of optical spectroscopy. Eight CL events are presented for the first time…
The reflection hump is a prominent feature in the hard X-ray spectrum of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Its exact shape and its correlation to other quantities provide valuable information about the inner and outer regions of an AGN. Our main goal is to study the reflection hump in a large sample of nearby AGN. We aim to investigate the evolution of reflection with absorption and its correlation with the spectral index. We analysed archived NuSTAR observations of the 70-month BAT catalogue AGN. By performing a detailed spectral analysis, we were able to constrain the spectral parameters and to …
The corona is an integral component of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which produces the bulk of the X-ray emission above 1--2 keV. However, many of its physical properties and the mechanisms powering this emission remain a mystery. In particular, the temperature of the coronal plasma has been difficult to constrain for large samples of AGN, as constraints require high quality broadband X-ray spectral coverage extending above 10 keV in order to measure the high energy cutoff, which provides constraints on the combination of coronal optical depth and temperature. We present constraints on the cor…
We studied the spectral changes of the high-mass X-ray binary system LMC X-4 to understand the origin and mechanisms beyond its super-orbital modulation (30.4 days). To this aim, we obtained a monitoring campaign with Swift/XRT (0.3-10 keV) and complemented these data with the years-long Swift/BAT survey data (15-60 keV). We found a self-consistent, physically motivated, description of the broadband X-ray spectrum using a Swift/XRT and a NuSTAR observation at the epoch of maximum flux. We decomposed the spectrum into the sum of a bulk+thermal Comptonization, a disk-reflection component and a s…
